


What can our heirs inherit but our curse?

by amantarae



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, let them be bad dads together, talk about your problems you fool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 17:39:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16602569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amantarae/pseuds/amantarae
Summary: Sometimes there isn't a clean answer. Sometimes all there is is someone who understands.Hadrian and Samothes share a moment about fatherhood.





	What can our heirs inherit but our curse?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Thomas Bastard's Book 4, Epigram 7: "Our fathers did but use the world before"

It is the seventh year in Aubade when Samothes meets Hadrian on the road between the shrine and the castle. It is the pale, vague hour of dawn, not quite night, and not quite day. 

“You’re here late.” 

Hadrian looks at the sky as if noticing it for the first time. “You’re up… early?” 

“I like to see the city. Before the day starts.” 

Hadrian nods. “I was just, well, you know how it is. Night, day, they don’t exactly match up.” He looks lost. 

“Come with me. I know a good place to eat breakfast. It’ll be quiet, we can talk.” 

So they do. Samothes expects it to be much the same as their other conversation—a distraction, largely about anything and nothing of great weight. But Hadrian still looks far away. He stops in the middle of one of his sentences, and then restarts, looking Samothes in the eye for the first time all morning. 

“I saw—I saw my son, Benjamin. Just for a moment, but I know it was him.” 

“It’s been a long time. You must be happy to know that he’s safe.” Samothes smiles slightly. 

“It isn’t that. I mean, I am. But,” Hadrian stops and shakes his head, distance returning to his features. “When I left. I mean, not when I came here, but when I saw him the last time, he was just a kid. And in my head, he still is but… but he’s not. He grew up, and I missed it. And I don’t know exactly what it’s like out there, but it’s not good, right? It hasn’t been easy.” He’s floundering, thoughts tumbling out before he has time to string them together. 

“Hadrian.” And Samothes puts his hand on Hadrian’s shoulder, looking for a moment as tired as Hadrian has ever seen him in Aubade. “There was a morning once where I woke up to an empty bed. And in my son’s place, where there had been a little boy the night before, there was a man, almost grown, and ready to go to war.” 

Hadrian looks away, apologetic. “I must seem-“ But Samothes silences him.

“I don’t mean that to diminish you. I just mean that we all make decisions that our children must live with. They all grow up.” Samothes squeezes his shoulder and draws his attention back. “The difference is that you have the chance to go back and make another decision.”

**Author's Note:**

> Their conversations return to what they were after that, debates and distractions that only brush the reality of their situation, but Hadrian thinks on what Samothes says. Every so often, they each share a story about when their boys were young.
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> Find me and my art and my various yellings over on twitter at @amanda_p_rae


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